


Grey Season

by AraSigyrn



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 01:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraSigyrn/pseuds/AraSigyrn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson muses on his life and what he has lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grey Season

Grief, in sufficient quantities, ceases to be a merely emotional pain.  
  
I have written, with all the reserve and control of which I am capable, of the death of Sherlock Holmes. I have revisited that manuscript time after time to strike out as much of my own grief as is possible so that my eventual readers will not be party to the collapse that followed. The journey back from Switzerland was bleak and had not Lestrade found his way to the Reichenbach Falls on the very heels of the desperate mastermind, it is likely that those grim falls would claimed a third, more modest life. The best and most loyal of men, he kept a dogged watch over me and was never more than five inches from my side when we approached a precipice, train platform or the deck of ship which bore us back to England.  
  
Mary sustained me; only the thought of her beloved face and the black treachery it would be to add to her already considerable sorrows, kept me from the abyss. I am not proud of this fact but it remains a fact. I did not - could not - love her in those grey, endless days when all the world seemed fogged over and every effort was spent in vain for how could there be meaning in a world deprived of that brilliant mind, that noble heart? That is my shame. That is my failing. That, above all else, is my sin.  
  
She had been pregnant some seven months when Holmes had come to our door that fateful, final time. By the time I had limped my broken way back to our doorstep, she was within weeks of her confinement. I do not like to think of what manner of man I was during those terrible days but I will carry the memory of her smile, the kick of our child and the warmth of her arms around me as I wept until this weary life is spent.  
  
As I write, I wonder as I have for countless barren nights; could I have saved her? In my time as a doctor, I have tended the syphilitic, the drunk, the whores and ruffians, the greatest and the meanest denizens of London. I have had my failures as have all medical men, but I was fortunate and far out-numbered the dead with paitents restored to good health and cheer. I saw no need for concern in Mary's case, she was rosy with health and brimful of life. I asked that a fellow doctor attend, fearful of my own apathetic bleakness and strove to stir myself from the black mood that had descended, surely the equal of any that had plagued Holmes during happier days.  
  
I will not - cannot - transcribe the ordeal in detail. Indeed, I cannot remember much detail of that terrible night. I remember her cry, the convulsive clutch of her hand, the blood like ink across the sheets and linens of the bed, the sobbing breath as she fought to bring our child into this world, the loosening grip as her strength waned and the shocked blankness of my brother doctor's face as hope was lost.  
  
The funeral was, I am told, a grand one. Half the Yard and more turned out, I only remember Lestrade at my elbow, eyes wet and face set. He wore the black mourning band for fully a year afterwards, and I never found the words to thank him. I remember the rain, the chill of the day that was yet no match for the hollow chill where my heart had once been. I do not remember my eulogy, Lestrade would tell me later that I wrung tears from every eye and several hardened Bobbies wept like children.  
  
I remember the echo of her voice, the polished marble tombstone and the dragging weariness of continued existence. I am not a noble man and despair threatened daily but my one lingering hope was to one day see them, all three, in a place with no suffering and that one hope barred me from any hope of escape from the penance of my daily life.  
  
My grief is not something I feel. It is a weight on my thoughts and my spirit, dragging me down into despair. I cannot hope to struggle with its weight forever but, God willing, I will endure long enough!


End file.
